Nine-year-old Ryleigh Lamar gets blasted by water in Civic Center fountain In Englewood on Monday, June 18, 2012.

Not to beat a dead lawn, but June was flippin’ hot. How hot was it? Hotter than Colorado has ever been before — at least as long as they’ve been keeping records. Rising mercury turned the wedding month into the June swoon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s State of the Climate report posted Wednesday.

As hot as it was here in Denver, it was even hotter on the state’s southeastern plains. Lamar hit or topped 110 degrees three times last month, and on June 28 John Martin Reservoir in neighboring Bent County hit 111 degrees, in other words, the temperature of a properly grilled steak.

It never fails: A cold day in May — or January — prompts a person of a certain viewpoint to guffaw about the silliness of global warming. We’re seeing the other side of the political coin with this terrible summer of wildfires and drought across much of the country.

CBS gives the Associated Press story last week a question mark: “Summer 2012: Glimpse of Climate Change Effects?” A query is fine print to a bold claim. As certainly as most credible scientists agree that climate change is real, even more agree that you can’t capture it in isolated snapshots inside the great museum of time.

Forecast Colorado is your place for the latest breaking weather news for Denver and Colorado, featuring the latest forecasts, road conditions and closures — with an occasional detour into meterological science, trivia and oddities.